His taste for philosophical poetry increased with his years, and Wordsworth and Shelley became his prime favorites. His contributions to the "Eton Miscellany" were various, sometimes in prose and now and then in verse. A poet by nature, he could not resist the Muse's influence, and he expressed a genuine emotion, oftentimes elegantly, and never without a meaning.
In the summer of 1827 he left Eton, and travelled with his parents eight months in Italy. And now began that life of thought and feeling so conspicuous to the end of his too brief career. Among the Alps his whole soul took the impress of those early introductions to what is most glorious and beautiful in Nature. After passing the mountains, Italian literature claimed his attention, and he entered upon its study with all the ardor of a young and earnest student. An Abbate who recognized his genius encouraged him with his assistance in the difficult art of Italian versification, and, after a very brief stay in Italy, at the age of seventeen, he wrote several sonnets which attracted considerable attention among scholars. Very soon after acquiring the Italian language, the great Florentine poet opened to him his mystic visions. Dante became his worship, and his own spirit responded to that of the author of the "Divina Commedia."
His growing taste led him to admire deeply all that is noble in Art, and he soon prized with enthusiasm the great pictures of the Venetian, the Tuscan, and the Roman schools. "His eyes," says his father, "were fixed on the best pictures with silent, intense delight." One can imagine him at this period wandering with all the ardor of youthful passion through the great galleries, not with the stolid stony gaze of a coldblooded critic, but with that unmixed enthusiasm which so well becomes the unwearied traveller in his buoyant days of experience among the unveiled glories of genius now first revealed to his astonished vision.
He returned home in 1828, and went to reside at Cambridge, having been entered, before his departure for the Continent, at Trinity College. It is said that he cared little for academical reputation, and in the severe scrutiny of examination he did not appear as a competitor for accurate mathematical demonstrations. He knew better than those about him where his treasures lay,--and to some he may have seemed a dreamer, to others an indifferent student, perhaps. His aims were higher than the tutor's black-board, and his life-thoughts ran counter to the usual college-routine. Disordered health soon began to appear, and a too rapid determination of blood to the brain often deprived him of the power of much mental labor. At Florence he had been seized with a slight attack of the same nature, and there was always a tendency to derangement of the vital functions. Irregularity of circulation occasioned sometimes a morbid depression of spirits, and his friends anxiously watched for symptoms of returning health. In his third Cambridge year he grew better, and all who knew and loved him rejoiced in his apparent recovery.
About this time, some of his poetical pieces were printed, but withheld from publication. It was the original intention for the two friends, Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, to publish together; but the idea was abandoned. Such lines as these the young poet addressed to the man who was afterwards to lend interest and immortality to the story of his early loss:--
"Alfred, I would that you beheld me now,
Sitting beneath a mossy, ivied wall
On a quaint bench, which to that structure old
Winds an accordant curve. Above my head
Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves,
Seeming received into the blue expanse
That vaults this summer noon. Before me lies
A lawn of English verdure, smooth, and bright,
Mottled with fainter hues of early hay,
Whose fragrance, blended with the rose-perfume
From that white flowering bush, invites my sense
To a delicious madness,--and faint thoughts
Of childish years are borne into my brain
By unforgotten ardors waking now.
Beyond, a gentle slope leads into shade
Of mighty trees, to bend whose eminent crown
Is the prime labor of the pettish winds,
That now in lighter mood are twirling leaves
Over my feet, or hurrying butterflies,
And the gay humming things that summer loves,
Through the warm air, or altering the bound
Where yon elm-shadows in majestic line
Divide dominion with the abundant light."
And this fine descriptive passage was also written at this period of his life:--
"The garden trees are busy with the shower
That fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk,
Lowly and sweetly, as befits the hour,
One to another down the grassy walk.
Hark! the laburnum from his opening flower
This cheery creeper greets in whisper light,
While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,
Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore.
What shall I deem their converse? Would they hail
The wild gray light that fronts yon massive cloud,
Or the half-bow rising like pillared fire?
Or are they sighing faintly for desire
That with May dawn their leaves may be o'erflowed,
And dews about their feet may never fail?"
The first college prize for English declamation was awarded to him this year; and his exercise, "The Conduct of the Independent Party during the Civil War," greatly improved his standing at the University. Other honors quickly followed his successful essay, and he was chosen to deliver an oration in the College Chapel just before the Christmas vacation. This was in the year 1831. He selected as his subject the one eminently congenial to his thought; and his theme, "The Influence of Italian upon English Literature," was admirably treated. The oration is before us as we write, and we turn the pages with a fond and loving eye. We remember, as we read, his brief sojourn,--that he died "in the sweet hour of prime,"--and we are astonished at the eloquent wisdom displayed by a lad of twenty summers. "I cannot help considering," he says, "the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;--"An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on his imagination and spreading gently over his affections, until, by the blessing of Heaven, it may be absorbed without loss in the pure inner light of which that voice has spoken, as no other can,--
"'Light intellectual, yet full of love,
Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
Joy, every other sweetness far above.'"
It was young Hallam's privilege to be among Coleridge's favorites, and in one of his poems Arthur alludes to him as a man in whose face "every line wore the pale cast of thought." His conversations with "the old man eloquent" gave him intense delight, and he often alluded to the wonderful talks he had enjoyed with the great dreamer, whose magical richness of illustration took him captive for the time being.
At Abbotsford he became known to Sir Walter Scott, and Lockhart thus chronicles his visit:--
"Among a few other friends from a distance, Sir Walter received this summer [1829] a short visit from Mr. Hallam, and made in his company several of the little excursions which had in former days been of constant recurrence. Mr. Hallam had with him his son, Arthur, a young gentleman of extraordinary abilities, and as modest as able, who not long afterwards was cut off in the very bloom of opening life and genius. His beautiful verses, 'On Melrose seen in Company with Scott,' have since been often printed."
"I lived an hour in fair Melrose:
It was not when 'the pale moonlight'
Its magnifying charm bestows;
Yet deem I that I 'viewed it right.'
The wind-swept shadows fast careered,
Like living things that joyed or feared,
Adown the sunny Eildon Hill,
And the sweet winding Tweed the distance crowned well.
"I inly laughed to see that scene
Wear such a countenance of youth,
Though many an age those hills were green,
And yonder river glided smooth,
Ere in these now disjointed walls
The Mother Church held festivals,
And full-voiced anthemings the while
Swelled from the choir, and lingered down the echoing aisle.
"I coveted that Abbey's doom:
For if, I thought, the early flowers
Of our affection may not bloom,
Like those green hills, through countless hours,
Grant me at least a tardy waning
Some pleasure still in age's paining;
Though lines and forms must fade away,
Still may old Beauty share the empire of Decay!
"But looking toward the grassy mound
Where calm the Douglas chieftains lie,
Who, living, quiet never found,
I straightway learnt a lesson high:
And well I knew that thoughtful mien
Of him whose early lyre had thrown
Over these mouldering walls the magic of its tone.
"Then ceased I from my envying state,
And knew that aweless intellect
Hath power upon the ways of Fate,
And works through time and space uncheck'd.
That minstrel of old Chivalry
In the cold grave must come to be;
But his transmitted thoughts have part
In the collective mind, and never shall depart.
"It was a comfort, too, to see
Those dogs that from him ne'er would rove,
And always eyed him reverently,
With glances of depending love.
They know not of that eminence
Which marks him to my reasoning sense;
They know but that he is a man,
And still to them is kind, and glads them all he can.
"And hence their quiet looks confiding,
Hence grateful instincts seated deep,
By whose strong bond, were ill betiding,
They'd risk their own his life to keep.
What joy to watch in lower creature
Such dawning of a moral nature,
And how (the rule all things obey)
They look to a higher mind to be their law and stay!"
At the University he lived a sweet and gracious life. No man had truer or fonder friends, or was more admired for his excellent accomplishments. Earnest in whatever he attempted, his enthusiasm for all that was high and holy in literature stamped his career at Trinity as one of remarkable superiority. "I have known many young men, both at Oxford and elsewhere, of whose abilities I think highly, but I never met with one whom I considered worthy of being put into competition with Arthur for a moment," writes his early and intimate friend. "I can scarcely hope to describe the feelings with which I regarded him, much less the daily beauty of his existence, out of which they grew," writes another of his companions. Politics, literature, philosophy he discussed with a metaphysical subtilty marvellous in one so young. The highest comprehension seemed native to his mind, so that all who came within the sphere of his influence were alike impressed with his vast and various powers. The life and grace of a charmed circle, the display of his gifts was not for show, and he never forgot to keep the solemn injunction, "My son, give me thine heart," clearly engraven before him.